Vitamin D3 Obfuscation

Posted on September 13, 2018 by Mark Pegram

As I have not written in many months, I would like to apologize for my absence. I had an injury in the spring that has taken many months to recover. I am now nine weeks since surgery and three weeks into rehab. In any case, I have recovered from my incapacitation enough to write. I would like to say that the American medical institutions have the best diagnostic capability in the world.

The attack on vitamins and minerals continues. The mere suggestion that a vitamin or mineral might help with a chronic disease will bring outrage from the “medical community.” Typically, it is not from your doctor, although he may have fallen into the allure of medical propaganda. Also, your doc must follow medical guidelines as defined by AHRQ. Obfuscation is more likely from research that is less than adequate—manipulated—or from a news outlet that gets a large portion of its advertising from the medical industry.

Just recently there was an article in the New York Times suggesting that people are unnecessarily taking more vitamin D. Dr. JoAnn E. Manson is quoted in the article as saying, “A lot of clinicians are acting like there is a pandemic” of vitamin D deficiency. There is a pandemic, as in the US alone, Dr. William Grant has shown there are 400 thousand premature deaths just from cancer, diabetes, and heart disease that could be eliminated if serum vitamin D was raised to 45 ng/ml. Grant has done similar studies for other countries with similar results. The article goes on to say that it is about the money that the vitamin D promoters are getting. Wow, I haven’t received any money for writing this blog. The amount that I have received does not even cover the cost of the domain.

This leads us to many studies done to show that vitamin D has no effect in the treatment of the same diseases stated above. It should be interesting to note that in these studies, they always talk about dose and not what the serum vitamin D is. One study suggested that “large doses” of vitamin D had no effect on cancer. It turns out that their large dose was 100,000 IU (2.5 mg) given once per month. This works out to an average 3,300 IU per day. The body operates better with a daily dose instead of one large dose in a month. This amount is not near enough to get the population to a serum level above 40 ng/ml. It would take a daily dose of well over 10,000 IU per day to get ninety-five percent of the population above 40 ng/ml. Also, taken one time a month instead of once per day is not the same affect. Here is a story of one cancer survivor.

So, what does go on about vitamin D and other minerals for that matter? It is about the money. The money that the medical industry makes from a chronically ill population. Researchers have hidden the benefits of vitamin D so that they could make vitamin D analogs for large incomes from the sale of these drugs. At the 2010 Food and Nutrition Board on vitamin D and calcium, there was a consultant and a member of the board that owned patents on vitamin D analogs and were promoting the manufacture of such drugs. (Links from this post are now broken as that was eight years ago.) This conflict of interest is in strict violation of the National Academy of Science policy for ethics.

The holding out of benefits, of vitamins and minerals in adequate amounts, by the medical industry is a slap to the face of the Americans that have paid for the research. One of my pet peeves are biologic drugs or biosimilar drugs. Biologics are made by taking a known cell line, adding large amounts of vitamins and minerals in a reactor, and extracting the desired protein or amino acid. This then becomes a patented drug that is sold for large amounts of money. The drug my have serious side effects. Why not just give the patient the vitamins and minerals and let the body make its own repair compounds? “it’s the economy stupid.” –Pandemic Survivor

Vitamin D and Prevention of Chronic Diseases

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Mark Pegram

Below is a video about vitamin D that will change your life and possibly help you overcome serious diseases and medical conditions. This video is presented through the University of California Television, UCTV. Dr. Michael Holick has long been a promoter of vitamin D even at the risk of his career. He has been repeatedly attacked and lost his job at one point. He has become very cautious in his presentations on vitamin D. This video was made in 2009 and there has been much new science published since then on the advantages of vitamin D for health.

The video is about one hour long. It is very entertaining as Dr. Holick helps you to understand the science in a consumable reality. In the video Dr. Holick expresses the need to keep your serum level of 25(OH)D above 30 ng/ml. However, at the end of the video, please note that his average level is 52 ng/ml. This is the bottom of the level typically achieve by the indigenous populations along the equator. I do believe that the best levels to maintain are 60 to 80 ng/ml which is well within the norms of clinical practice of 30 ng/ml to 100 ng/ml. At these higher levels, be sure that you are getting enough magnesium as well.

Dr. Michael Holick Vitamin D and Prevention of Chronic Diseases http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq1t9WqOD-0

The only way to know for sure that you have the correct amount of vitamin D is to be tested. Enjoy Health. – Pandemic Survivor

VITAMIN D reduces 42 health problems

Posted on April 20, 2014 by Mark Pegram

Henry Lahore at VitaminDWiki list forty-two health problems as proven by Double-blind random-controlled-trials.

Hypertension, Cardiovascular, Back Pain, Diabetes, Influenza, Falls, Hip Fractures, Breast Cancer, Raynaud’s pain, Menstrual Pain, C-section and pregnancy risks, Low Birth Weight, Chronic Kidney Disease, Cystic Fibrosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, TB, Rickets, Respiratory Tract Infection, Lupus, Sickle Cell pain, leg ulcers, traumatic brain injury. Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Congestive Heart Failure, Middle Ear Infection, Gingivitis, Muscles in seniors, Antibiotic use in seniors, Taller Infants, Gestational Diabetes, Heart Strength following an attack, Prostate Cancer, Asthma, Depression, Breastfeeding, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Hives, cholesterol, Weight Loss: http://is.gd/proofvitd

What else do you need to know to be sure you have an adequate serum vitamin D level? – Pandemic Survivor

Keep Them out of the Sun!

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Mark Pegram

Since this past fall, there has been an orchestrated campaign against the findings of health from vitamin D. The latest such attack has come from Dr. Mark Bolland, lead researcher in a recent finding. This in today’s Daily Mail: “He and his colleagues in the department of medicine at Auckland University, New Zealand, analysed the results of nearly 50 trials involving more than 200,000 people. They found that vitamin D supplements had little or no impact on the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer or even bone fractures.”

From the same article, Professor Philippe Autier of France is even more blatant: “The vitamin D fad, he says, is just ‘a commercial promotion campaign’ in which sellers of supplements, UV lamps, fortified foods and blood tests are ‘taking advantage of disease-mongering around so-called vitamin D deficiency’”

Then there is this news release from Columbia University: “Study Finds No Evidence That Vitamin D Supplements Reduce Depression”

Given that they believe their own work, I think the solution is simple; keep them out of the sun for a year with no vitamin D supplements. If they survive this experience, then, we can see what type of diseases they have developed during this test. It all seems very reasonable to me. If they survive and develop no disease then we can say that they are correct. If they developed significant disease states, then this could be documented and their contribution to science and health would have been achieved.

We should also add the journalist to this cohort as well for just passing along information that is based on lack of logic and science. The number of people that have jumped on this band wagon should give us a very large cohort. I say lack of science because most of the studies reviewed are based on supplementation with very small amounts of vitamin D and second the studies are based on supplementation and not serum levels of vitamin D. Serum levels do not respond equally to supplementation or sunshine exposure.

Small amounts in supplementation in many studies are just ridiculous. Consider that we have long told the population of the world that all they needed was 400 IU of vitamin D daily. Studies have been based on this amount that is used to keep a ten pound (4.5kg) baby from getting rickets. So just how much vitamin D is this? 400 IU is equal to 0.01 milligrams or 10 micrograms. This is the amount that people with light skin color would make in about thirty seconds in the midday summer sun with sixty percent of their skin exposed. Okay, so let’s rewrite Dr. Bolland’s statement with this understanding: “They found that thirty seconds in the midday summer sun had little or no impact on the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer or even bone fractures.” Hunh? I guess that I could have just figured that out without a study. What about thirty minutes in the midday summer sun Dr. Bolland? Isn’t that how we used to cure tuberculosis?

How easy it is to just jump on the ‘band wagon’ for a joy ride because everyone else says that it will be fun. Journalist, are you prepared to spend a year without sunshine to prove the scientist correct? I am glad I am not the person paying for these studies – wait, maybe I have through one of the divisions of Health and Human Services. Anyway, this type of logic almost killed me from severe sleep apnea to say nothing of three decades of pain. – “Disease mongering around vitamin D deficiency” – Pandemic Survivor

Wellness from the Sun has Changed Forever

Posted on March 22, 2014 by Mark Pegram

Henry Lahore of Vitamin D Wiki and with the help of others is putting out a video to help people understand how our relationship to the sun has changed over the last fifty years. We have moved from outdoors to indoors. Activities including work and play have all moved inside. All of our energy for health which includes all the food that we eat comes from the sun. Now, with sunscreens to shield us from the sun and sheltering inside, chronic diseases have increased significantly.

Highlights of the video include:

Diseases from low sun exposure
How food sources from decades ago were higher in vitamin D
How much vitamin D to take to get started
Blood test should be used to determine if your vitamin D level is high enough
The science behind the understanding of how vitamin D works for wellness
The video is to be made available so that it can easily be provided with voice over for eighty eight different languages
All of this in only five minutes in an easily understood format

One of the features of the video is a doctor that raised serum levels of vitamin D for his patients to 80 ng/ml. This is well within the normal ranges of 30 to 100 ng/ml. The patients in his clinic went from an average of four visits per year to one visit per year. This statement should be significant in raising your awareness of the power of the sun and how it affects us and society as a whole. I will let you know when this video becomes available. When it is available, please pass it along on face book, twitter, and any other public means that you have available. – Pandemic Survivor

Vitamins and Minerals or Not

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Mark Pegram

“There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first is the quack who cures you; the second is the highly qualified person who doesn’t.” G. K. Chesterton Illustrated London News 2-15-1908 from Chesterton.org.

There has been a flurry of news articles during December about vitamins and minerals. It was started by an editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine, “Enough is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamins and Mineral Supplements.” – E. Guallar, et. Al. The editorial ended with the words of total authority, “case closed” and “enough is enough”. Following the large gathering crowd movement or jumping on the “bandwagon” of lemmings, there were also many negative articles about vitamin D, like “Vitamin D Fails to Ease Winter Colds and Coughs” New York Times Blog. Of course the study represented was using only 1000 IU of vitamin D. Not nearly enough to adequately boost your immune system. Why do a study to determine if one to five minutes in the midday summer sun will stop a cold?

Toward the end of the month and even today you can find articles that are refuting the negative news about vitamin and minerals. Doctors and writers site case after case of where vitamins and minerals are necessary to heal and prevent disease. It is a war of seeming experts explaining how the interpretation of the research is invalid and the research is also flawed. But what are you to do if you cannot read the research and make a decision on your own? You can choose to trust the experts, but which experts? You can do nothing and not assure you are getting enough vitamins and minerals and you have followed the expert’s advice by default. You can wait until you get a very life threatening disease and when allopathic medicine has failed you, start looking for a solution. I am sorry that I waited until I was almost dead before evaluating the research myself. I know that most of you do not have the means, time, or understanding necessary to make these decisions on your own. How are you going to believe the quack that wants to cure you?

Unfortunately for you, the articles refuting the earlier articles are mostly being ignored by the main stream press and the population in general. First in is really a big deal in a marketing war. You become immune to the rhetoric and just skip over the article even if it did make it to your consumed media.

Many of you do not realize that there is a large marketing campaign happening on both sides to get your money. Whether it is the “experts” that practice allopathic medicine or the “alternative” group that also wants to get your money, a marketing war is being fought hard in the press. In earlier times, especially in a time of manipulation of the world’s population, this type of action was called propaganda. Propaganda is a word that you don’t see much anymore because of the negative connotation, but its practice and techniques are deluged on you every day.

Consider the various types of propaganda techniques as listed by Oracle ThinkQuest Education Foundation: Assertion, Bandwagon, Card Stacking or selective omission, Glittering Generalities, Lesser of Two Evils, Name Calling, Pinpointing the Enemy, Plain Folks (this is my favorite technique), Simplification or Stereotyping, Testimonials, and Transfer or viewing one item the same way you view another item. Are you dizzy yet? The marketers depend on that. We have all used these techniques to persuade people to come around to our viewpoint. Politics, marketing, and marketing passing itself off as science are thrown at us every day from our many media sources. Experts are paid handsomely to present confusing facts as “case closed”. All of these propaganda techniques were tossed at you in December.

Your health is important to you. Health insurance is not the solution. Becoming informed is the solution and don’t throw away the advice of quacks just because some expert used name calling to try to get you away from their understanding. Don’t always trust the information from experts without confirming what is being said. This is a life-long task of hard work to sort through marketing versus fact, truth versus relative truth, and what is it really that gives you health. To not do this deadly – Pandemic Survivor

“There are two kinds of paradoxes. They are not so much the good and the bad, nor even the true and the false. Rather they are the fruitful and the barren; the paradoxes which produce life and the paradoxes that merely announce death. Nearly all modern paradoxes merely announce death.” G.K. Chesterton ILN 3-11-1911, Chesterton.org.

Find the comment balloon to the right of the title. You may have to move your cursor over it for it to show. I would like to know your thoughts.

Mesmerized by Epimerization

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Mark Pegram

Franz Mesmer was a German born physician that had interest related to human and animal behavior. He contended that through ‘animal magnetism’, significant physical results could be realized. His name is the basis for the word Mesmerized. It has been an unfortunate occurrence in vitamin D science that the medical professionals and the general population have been hypnotized like chickens with a line drawn in the dirt. (We did this as kids – check it out Chicken Hypnotized) We all need a nudge to wake up from this surreal dream. The following is not for the faint of heart or for those that do not have the curiosity to pursue a deeper understanding. If not curious, then just watch the chicken video and have a good day.

Epimerization is simply the difference in the positioning or bond angle of the OH group in the Carbon 3 position of the vitamin D compound. What do we know about how much difference a bond angle will make? It seems that this bond angle is of significance in genetic expression, so let’s explore. Check out this example for the sugar glucose: Epimers

It came to my attention several years ago that one of the local hospitals that was attached to a state university was doing vitamin D testing only on D2 and its metabolites. The reasoning was that the clinicians wanted only to know the level of the drug, vitamin D2, because this is what had been prescribed. The logic was that the level of the hormonal metabolites of natural vitamin D3 were so low that it was of no consequence. After all, there had been a great job done for the last fifty years of scaring people out of the sun. Or maybe, this was not exactly the logic, but I am sure this is close. So the mixture of treating D3 and D2 as equals and ignoring the total effect of the metabolites of these pre-hormones has done the practice of medicine and the population as a whole a great disservice. It is only through the separation of these two compounds and not allowing peer reviewed papers to be published without designating what is being used that we can achieve our goal of being reconnected to the sun.

I had always thought that the complications of not having accurate serum vitamin D levels or 25(OH)D was a matter of the different test methods not giving either totals of the two or only values for one or the other – 25(OH)D₂or 25(OH)D₃. In the later case I was right as is suggested by what was being done at one of our university hospitals. But it turns out that it is a lot more complicated. Consider the recent release by the American Chemical Society – “New Standard for vitamin D testing to assure accurate test results”, January 25, 2012. The paper describes the storage metabolites of vitamin D: “The researchers developed four versions of the standard, with different levels of the vitamin D metabolites 25(OH)D₂ and 25(OH)D₃ in human serum. They also determined the levels of 3-epi-25(OH)D in the adult human serum samples. Surprisingly, they found that this metabolite — previously thought to only exist in the blood of infants — was present in adult serum. “This reference material provides a mechanism to ensure measurement accuracy and comparability and represents a first step toward standardization of 25(OH)D measurements,” say the researchers.” It seems that these epi-metabolites have a less effect on calcium. In order of effect on increasing hypercalcemia, it is 3-epi-25(OH)D_3,25(OH)D₃, 3-epi-25(OH)D₂, and 25(OH)D₂(and don’t forget the toxisterols that can be made during manufacture of D₂from over irradiation of fungus). It also seems that the epi-compounds are just as effective as the original. Did I get this correct? Here is a starting place for you to begin your consideration. 1α,25(OH)₂-3-Epi-Vitamin D₃, a Natural Physiological Metabolite of Vitamin D₃: Its Synthesis, Biological Activity and Crystal Structure with Its Receptor This is an open access to the full paper. Do you begin to see the need for the separation of D2 and D3 and metabolites?

Now does this really get us to a better place in the understanding of our natural hormone D? Consider the recent attention on cholesterol sulfate and the resulting compounds of hormones that are made from cholesterol sulfate, in particular vitamin D3 sulfate. So now are we looking at eight storage metabolites instead of four? How confusing can it get? Consider what the writers of this paper: HPLC Method for 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Measurement: Comparison with Contemporary Assays, March 2006, had to say: “According to Shimada et al., nearly equal amounts of 25(OH)D₃ sulfate and 25(OH)D₃ are usually present in patient sera.” The Shimada paper: Shimada K, Mitamura K, Higashi T. Determination of vitamin D₃ metabolites using high-performance liquid chromatography or immunoaffinity chromatography. J Chin Chem Soc 2000;47:285-228.

Only after the clinical outcomes related to the levels of the eight compounds, 3-epi-25(OH)D_3,25(OH)D₃, 3-epi-25(OH)D₂, 25(OH)D_2,3-epi-25(OH)D₃sulfate_,25(OH)D₃sulfate, 3-epi-25(OH)D₂sulfate, and 25(OH)D₂sulfate are determined will we be able to accurately assess the health benefits of vitamin D.

Just think of the confusion of test methods to determine the amounts of the various vitamin D compounds and correlating clinical outcomes with one thing that we call 25(OH)D. Researchers and reviewers, it is really up to you. If you fail in allowing papers to be published without making the necessary distinctions, then, the population will continue to suffer at your ineptness. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary HHS – Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D., Director Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, are you listening? Okay, all you chickens, GET UP!

If you really were not curious and you made it this far anyway, then may God bless you and go spend some time in the sun. – Pandemic Survivor

Death Panels in US Health Care

Posted on December 23, 2009 by Mark Pegram

During the present conversation on Health Care Reform legislation, there has been a lot of discussion about death panels. It seems that proponents of the present legislation have claimed that these panels are just scare tactics by those that do not want the legislation to pass. Here is an article from the New York Times discussing this issue. False ‘Death Panel’ has some Familiar Roots. Could it be that the real death panels are those groups that are appointed specifically as ‘non-biased’ for reporting to HHS, NIH, FDA, Department of Defense, and other government sponsoring bodies? The NY Times article claims “There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure.”

A committee or Food and Nutrition Board was appointed in September, 2008 to discuss and report on Dietary Reference Intakes for Vitamin D and Calcium. This committee is an arm of the Institute of Medicine and a sub-division of the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS was formed specifically to keep political views from entering into scientific decisions. From the Project Information for this FNB: “The project is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion), U.S. Department of Agriculture (Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, Agricultural Research Service), U.S. Department of Defense (Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center), and Health Canada.”

Dr. John Cannell, Vitamin D Council, was upset at the appointment of the members of this committee because he felt that the committee was biased because there was no one on the committee that been a leader in the ‘Vitamin D Revolution’. That was reported in his January 21, 2009 newsletter. Here is a feel for his upset from that newsletter: “Are these statements the reason the IOM excluded these vitamin D experts? Perhaps the IOM dislikes criticism more than it loves candor? When the new FNB vitamin D recommendations come out next summer, will those recommendations continue to “offend the most basic principles of pharmacology and toxicology?” If any member of the new board disagrees with the consensus of the board, will that scientist be allowed to produce a minority opinion without risking the loss of research grants in the future? “ I agree somewhat with John’s statements but it is also necessary not to have biased viewpoints on the committee which will make their report stronger evidence of the effects of vitamin D on the human body. This from their Conflicts of Interest Policy: “Finally, it is essential that the work of committees that are used by the institution in the development of reports not be compromised by issues of bias and lack of objectivity.”

They certainly would not want me on the committee having been pulled from the ‘jaws of death’ by vitamin D. I am exceptionally and without shame biased!! Dr. Cannell’s point is that there is no money to be made in the sale of vitamin D because it is one of the least expensive nutritional supplements on the market and it is free from sun exposure. Why not have some of the scientists on the committee that are the closest to the research? After all, these researchers have already demonstrated their character and their lack of bias by risking their careers in objecting to current practices. There are people in this esteemed list of doctors and scientist appointed to the committee that have done research on vitamin D so there is a body of knowledge that is inherent in this committee. So the question – is there any bias on this committee? List of committee members and a brief bio of their work.

When you look at bias you are always concerned about a scientist taking a strong viewpoint that could undermine his objectivity to the decision making process. Also you do not want a scientist that will gain materially from the decision that is being made. This last statement excludes everyone on the board. Not only does everyone on the board stand to not profit from their decision, the decision could reduce funding to their research projects by as much as half of everything they do. When it becomes knowledge that vitamin D is an essential hormone necessary to sustain life the amount of death from illness by chronic disease will be reduced by half and the medical industry including medical research will shrink accordingly.

This Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine on Dietary Reference Intakes for Vitamin D and Calcium, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, is by definition a death panel. Through their decisions they stand to significantly impact the centers of commerce and the flow of money throughout the world by improving the health of the world or holding to status quo. Financial Times has already discussed the fact that the reason the vitamin D science has not come forward is because of the money. Read this article: Why Governments are Selling Vitamin D Short – Sam Apple – published October 23, 2009 Financial Times: and my comments from my post ‘A Major Newspaper Gets It”

Dr. Cannell you are absolutely correct about the possibility of bias and so the question is will the members of this committee recuse themselves? Every member of this committee stands to lose. It is now a matter of character if the correct decisions are made. Dr. A. Catherine Ross, Chairman of this FNB, has the lives of millions of people in the world in her hands as well as the weight of the economic future of the world. The decisions of this committee will be the most powerful influence on health and economics that have been made in the history of the world since the death camps and declaration of war during World War II. I do not envy this appointment. My prayers are for you Dr. Ross and the committee.

Life, sometimes, is not easy in the sun. – Pandemic Survivor

Brigham and Woman’s Study on Vitamin D

Posted on July 7, 2009 by Mark Pegram

Well it looks like the NIH is finally taking this vitamin D thing seriously. Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Woman’s Hospital are to enroll 20,000 people in a study taking vitamin D3 at 2,000 IU per day and fish oil for omega three fats. Twenty five percent of the people in the study are to be black. You can read the AP article here.

I believe the level of supplementation is less than half of where it should be, but this is enough to start to see the effect on chronic disease. The real issue is that it will take several years into the study to start to see that the nation as a whole should be supplementing. The question for you is that if it does no harm why wait until the study is complete to get your serum level high enough to where it will do some good.

The serum level should definitely be above 40 ng/ml of 25(OH)D and to get the best effect in the body it should be above 70 ng/ml. The NIH fact sheet (Table 1) says that harm does not start to occur until it is above 200 ng/ml and animal studies show that below 400 ng/ml is safe. This gives you a safety factor of at least 3 which is much better than most any prescription drug.

The thing that is really troubling to me is that many of the participants will be given placebos with no vitamin D. I will pray for these people that they do no die from this continued deficiency of this vital steroid. Hopefully as positive results are shown that the placebo group will also be given vitamin D.

If you decide not to wait because you already have one of the many chronic diseases from vitamin D deficiency then do what it says on the Vitamin D Council home page. The volume of research is already HUGE and why we need another study is beyond me. We have already done this the first part of the 20th Century when everyone was taking 2 tablespoons of cod liver oil, about 2600 IU of D3, per day without harm. The only issue was that the vitamin A level may have been too high in the cod liver oil. Look at the volume of research by disease at this Vitamin D Council Research Page.

I have been reading extensively on roles of vitamin A and how it interacts with vitamin D. How these two act in synergy is still not complete science, but I do feel much better when I eat liver or take about 4000 IU of vitamin A from fish liver oil. I will blog about this in the near future.

Here are the many diseases: 17 varieties of cancer as well as heart disease, stroke, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, depression, chronic pain, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, muscle weakness, muscle wasting, birth defects, periodontal disease, and more.

Why wait!? It is your health and your life – be healthy! The encouraging thing about this pandemic is that the news of vitamin D is moving very fast through word of mouth and blogs like this one. We should start to see things like the overall rate of cancer start to reduce significantly as more people take it on themselves to supplement.

Go into the sun!!! The best time is between 11AM and 2PM when the UVB radiation is at it highest. Wear the least amount of clothes possible so that you do not get locked up and if you start to turn pink it is time to get out of the sun and wait until the next day. As you start to tan it will take longer and only about 15 to 20 minutes to start depending on skin color will be long enough. – Pandemic Survivor

Toxicity of Vitamin D

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Mark Pegram

This is my own opinion about toxicity and how we got to such a state as the doctors were trained to fear vitamin D. It seems there are multiple areas where mistakes were made about the issue of toxicity.

I think that one of the issues that everything that resembled vitamin D was called vitamin D.

There is D2 or ergocalciferol which is made from fungus when it is irradiated with UV light. This version has a higher molecular weight, an additional double bond, and one additional methyl group if that means anything to you. The medical professionals still considers this as equivalent to D3 even though there have been many papers saying that it does not act the same in our body. Rodents seem to thrive on vitamin D2 as they are noctournal animals and eating fungus that has been exposed to sunlight seems to be a reasonable way for them to get vitamin D and their bodies have adapted. I observed a squirrel just really munching down on what I assumed was a morel mushroom this past weekend when I was camping.

Hey researchers! – beware when using rodents for vitamin D test as they most likely do not react the same as humans. The case against using ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) as a supplement – Houghton and Vieth American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 84, No. 4, 694-697, October 2006th

There is D3, cholecalciferol, which our body produces from the sun with cholesterol in our skin. Our bodies love this particular version of D and it is the substance in our bodies that allows the sun to give us energy and health.

There is the storage form prehormone of vitamin D which has been found to correlate with lots of chronic diseases. It is called twenty-five hydroxy vitamin D and you usually see it written 25(OH)D. It can be either 25(OH)D2 or 25(OH)D3. This adds to the confusion when running test in the lab. Let’s say that a hospital runs only the test for 25(OH)D2 becuase that is what is being prescribed by their doctors and yet ignores the 25(OH)D3 that you are getting naturally. The better lab test will give you total and I will write another blog on testing.

Certainly if you take the activated steroid form of vitamin D or one twenty-five di-hydroxy vitamin D (1,25(OH)2D) then you will have problems if the dose is too high or administered over a period of time. This is yet one more form of vitamin D that the body uses as a steroid to do all the good stuff. This form in the blood stream allows our body to absorb more calicium and will ultimately drive your serum calcium too high.

The really cool thing about the understanding of the new research is that each organ cell seems to make the steroid version inside and outside the cell as it is needed. This means that it does not go through your blood and affect your calcium yet it gives you healthy functions. This is one of the things that has always confounded the research as researchers were going right for the best benefit or so they thought by using the steroid form of D instead of given just plain old D3 and letting the body make the steroid as it was needed.

The old paradigm was that the D3 was converted in the liver to the storage form, 25(OH)/D3, and then the kidney converted the 25(OH)D3 into the steroid form, 1,25(OH)2D3 and is still a valid path. However, when every cell that has vitamin D receptors converts its own steroid form as needed most excellant health is achieved. You have to have enough of the D3 in your body to fill up the stores.

Well let me stop here and say that this is most likely very confusing to you and has confused the medical field also. You should go read at the Pharmacology of vitamin D at the Vitamin D Council to get a better description. You can also read at the University of California Riverside as well about Vitamin D.

The amount of vitamin D is also a really large issue because it is active in extremely small amounts. Now lets see, the serum test for 25(OH)D is measured in ng/ml. We take D3 is in units of IU where 40 IU equals 1 microgram – that’s mircogram not milligram. I suspect you are just conformtable using milligrams and do not have a clue about a microgram much less nanograms per milliliter. So to get 1 milligram of vitamin D you would need to take 40,000 IU.

Are you confused yet. To formulate and to test at these extremely small quantaties is extremely difficult and one major lab has alreadly had a recall this year because of this difficulty. So that brings us to the one major case of toxicity with vitamin D3. It was a formulation problem and a mistake on how much should be taken by the person doing the supplementation. Evidently the person was taking over a million IU per day for over a year. It is my understanding that he recovered and was just fine.

To get more of an understanding on toxicity of D3 please visit the Vitamin D Council’s page on toxicity.

So what is the deal and why were doctors told to be extemely concerned about toxicity with vitamin D? It seems that D2 drives toxicity much quicker at lower levels in humans than D3. I found a paper by Moon and Reich at the Orthomolecular library entitled “The Vitamin D Problem An Important Lesson in Orthomolecular Medicine.” This paper was written in 1975. These writers researched the issue of toxicity and found that reports started p0uring in after vitamin D2 began to be used. This particular section in the paper is well titled: ‘Origin of the Vitamin D-Problem: Irradiated Ergosterol is Not Vitamin D’

Irradiated Ergosterol was origianllly used as the fortification of milk. However, in the 50’s and early 60’s most dairies changed to D3 because of the toxicity issues. During my early reading I was finding compounds that were in equilibrium with D3 as tachysterol and ichysterol but D2 seemed to have one called toxicysterol. This should have been a clue.

If all of this was known at least by the mid 70’s why all of the fear of D3. Because D2 and D3 were considered to be equivalent by the medical profession. I would say that this is terrible science or chosen to be ignored by the medical profession because there was no money to be made. Interestingly enough, D2 is what is found in vitamin D prescriptions because it can be protected because it is not a natuarlly occurring substance in the body. You could not obtain D3 in beneficial amounts until a few years ago. To get equivalent to one day in the sun where your body could make as much as 40,000 IU as a supplement you would have to take 100 of those 400 IU tablets.

I was curious as to a statement made by Hector DeLuca in his presentation to the Wisconsin Alumini Research Foundation on Vitamin D: The New Old Wonder Drug. This you tube video gives you the understanding of how vitamin D analogs have been very sucessful in helping to fund the programs at Wisconsin University. The statement that some of the beneficial findings over the years were not published is frightening. This of course was to protect intellectual property rights or dollars.

So does ignoring the facts for profit make the medical profession seem somewhat callous? It happens all of the time and you acting as the government protect these profits to the loss of your health and life. Consider former Secreatary Leavitt of Health and Human Services. On his bio page he listed his priorities. Number four was ‘markets before mandates’ and you had to go to his last to find ‘value life’. Now this is really troubling since I was tortured with pain for 25 years when there was a simple solution.

So is it going to far to say that by scaring people out of the sun and causing a significant increase in chronic disease that we were benefiting the well being of America because of an increased medical economy? Creating disease by selling sunscreen and profiting from the meds to treat the diseases is for another post.

Go into the Sun until you start to turn pink. Being in the pink is a good thing!

Vitamin D Deficiency Survivor

Changing the Face of Health with Vitamin D

Category Archives: Vitamin D Research